Here are only some of the many presenters and events at Bookstock 2012 …watch for updates!

Poetry on the Land:  An exhibition of sculpture, site specific installations, sound pieces, to open Saturday (4 – 7 PM) at the King Farm. The event will honor the naming of “The Poet’s Trail” which begins at the King Farm property and leads into the wider trail system of the Marsh Billings Rockefeller National Park trails of Mount Tom.

Unbound II: Book Art Juried Show. Opens Friday at 5:30 PM, at ArtisTree Gallery, presented by ArtisTree and Pentangle Arts Council, and stays open through August. Last year’s show was brilliant!

Sue Miller, keynote speaker!  Saturday.  Sue is recognized internationally for her elegant and sharply realistic accounts of the contemporary family.  Her books have been published in 20 countries around the world.  The Good Mother, the first of her nine novels, was an immediate bestseller, more than six months at the top of the New York Times charts.  Her latest novel is The Lake Shore Limited. Since The Good Mother was published in 1986, her novels have chronicled a tumultuous time in American family life. Sue teaches at Smith College.

Massive Second Hand and Vintage Book Sales. All day Friday and Saturday, on the Green and at the Norman Williams Public Library. A traditional event for over two decades in Woodstock.

James Tate. Saturday.  A Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Jim’s first collection of poems, The Lost Pilot (1967), was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets while Tate was still a student at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, making him one of the youngest poets to receive the honor.  Tate’s other awards have included the National Book Award.  About his work, the poet  John Ashbery wrote: “Local color plays a role, but the main event is the poet’s wrestling with passing moments, frantically trying to discover the poetry there and to preserve it, perishable as it is. I return to Tate’s books more often perhaps than to any others when I want to be reminded afresh of the possibilities of poetry.”

Rob Mermin. Sunday.  Rob will discuss his book about circuses and his own creation, the award-winning, Vermont-based Circus Smirkus, which he created in 1987. Having cultural exchanges with 24 countries, Smirkus was named the “United Nations of the Youth Circus World.” Rob Mermin trained in classical mime with Etienne Decroux and Marcel Marceau and has performed in European circus, theater, TV and film for forty years.  Rob’s awards include Copenhagen’s Gold Clown; the Vermont Arts Council Award of Merit, and the 2008 Governor’s Award for Excellence, Vermont’s highest honor in the arts.

David Berona. Saturday.  David is a historian of the illustrated book and the recognized authority on the woodcut novel.  He has published widely on this topic and is the author of Wordless Books: The Original Graphic Novels, a winner at the 2009 New York Book Show and a Harvey Awards nominee. He is the Dean of the Library and Academic Support Services at Plymouth State University, New Hampshire and a member of the visiting faculty at the Center for Cartoon Studies.

Jack Mayer.  Saturday. Middlebury-based, Jack is the author of Life in a Jar, the uplifting, heartbreaking true story of rescue of children from the Warsaw Ghetto in World War II.  A Middlebury pediatrician, Jack was born in New York City, where German was his first language.  His parents had escaped Nazi Germany and he grew up with the ever-present, but largely unspoken burdens of the Holocaust. He established his first pediatric practice 36 years ago in rural Franklin County on the Canadian border, bartering medical care for eggs and firewood.  He has written short stories, poems and essays about his years in pediatric practice in Vermont and hiking The Long Trail.  He was a participant at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 2003, 2005, and 2008.

April Bernard. Saturday.  April will present her new novel, Miss Fuller, a penetrating fictional account of one of America’s great woman, Margaret Fuller, an enormously talented woman who was a friend of Emerson’s and an early advocate of the equality of genders.  April is an accomplished poet and novelist and lives in Bennington, VT.  She has published several books of poetry and a prior novel. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, and is included in The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English and By Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry.

Rusty Dewees. Saturday. Rusty’s riotous alter ego, The Logger, is a raw, energetic backwoodsman that is a combination of all that’s wonderful and wacky about the northern New England spirit.  His One Man Comedy Show “The Logger” has played to sold out houses throughout New England for 15 years.  Rusty self-publishes and distributes his logger products.  Scrawlins is a collection of 94 short stories, that is a best seller in Vermont and Scrawlins Too a collection of 85 short stories.  Prepare to laugh your head off!

Ed Koren. Saturday.   Ed is one of America’s most loved cartoonists. Well known for his very hairy, very lovable characters, he got his artistic break in May 1962 when The New Yorker accepted one of his cartoons. It featured a sloppy-looking writer, cigarette dangling from his lips, sitting before a typewriter. Printed on his sweatshirt is one word: ‘’Shakespeare.’’ The magazine has published nearly 1000 of his cartoons and illustrations.  Ed received the Vermont Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. He has been a member of the Brookfield, VT, Volunteer Fire Department for 22 years.

Marie Howe.  Saturday.  Stanley Kunitz has described Howe’s poetry as “luminous, intense, and eloquent, rooted in an abundant inner life. Her long, deep-breathing lines address the mysteries of flesh and spirit, in terms accessible only to a woman who is very much of our time and yet still in touch with the sacred.”  Margaret Atwood wrote,” Marie Howe’s poetry doesn’t fool around…these poems are intensely felt, sparely expressed, and difficult to forget; poems of obsession that transcend their own dark roots.”

Parish Players. Saturday. The Upper Valley’s famous theater troupe, founded in 1966, brings to Bookstock one of its humorous ten minute plays, with tips on how to write ultra-short productions.

Willard Randall. Saturday.   Willard’s new book, Ethan Allen: His Life and Times, is the first biography of Ethan Allen in half a century, and the only one to render him a psychologically complicated, fully flawed hero of the American Revolution. As the man who almost single-handedly brought the state of Vermont into the Union, Allen was an enigmatic product of the American frontier, blessed with an extraordinary intellect and hot-tempered propensity for action. This is the definitive biography of Ethan Allen. Willard is the author of twelve books, including Benedict Arnold: Patriot and Traitor and Thomas Jefferson: A Life. He is a professor of history at Champlain College and resides in Burlington, Vermont.

Gumbo Loco.  Live music on the Green on Saturday.  An accomplished trio play a spicy mix of traditional Cajun, French Canadian and country music featuring fiddle, guitar, and harmony vocals in French, English and Spanish.

Sidney Lea.  Saturday.  Poet Laureate of Vermont Sydney Lea has been described as “a man in the woods with his head full of books, and a man in books with his head full of woods.” His affection for story, an affection derived in no small measure from men and women elders in New England, colors his poetry, just as a relish for the musical properties of the word colors his prose. His lifelong passion for the natural world informs almost his every utterance. Lea’s most recent collection of poems is Six Sundays Toward a Seventh: Selected Spiritual Poems. His stories, poems, essays and criticism have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The New York Times, Sports Illustrated and many other periodicals, as well as in more than forty anthologies. He lives in Newbury, Vermont.

Red Wing Puppet Theater. Saturday, for children. A fast-paced blend of puppetry, music, juggling and physical comedy. The show consists of several puppet shows incorporating many different puppet styles with live musical accompaniment. Each performance ends with a “close-up” demonstration of the puppets and questions and answers. Chuck Meese, the genius behind the Red Wing Puppet Theater, has performed at international festivals. It was during this time that Chuck learned the many different puppetry styles that he incorporates into his Red Wing shows today.

Exhibitor Tent. All day Saturday on the Green.  Over  25 publishers, authors, and cultural organizations exhibit their books and services. The tent is always jam packed with Festival attendees!